Anger is often misunderstood in the context of suicide. While sadness and hopelessness are widely recognised warning signs, it is internalised anger—particularly when suppressed or turned inward—that can quietly escalate risk. Studies have shown that individuals who routinely inhibit or ruminate on anger are significantly more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and behaviours. When a person is unable to direct anger toward its rightful source, it may be redirected toward the self. In these cases, the part carrying the rage may view death not as a desire to die, but as a desperate attempt to end intolerable emotional chaos.

We understand legacy burdens as emotional, relational, and cultural debts carried by parts of the system that were simply trying to survive. Eating disorder behaviours often emerge as protectors, following these old rules to avoid pain, rejection, or perceived danger.

When we meet these parts with curiosity instead of control, and when we begin to name the inherited messages they carry, the system can begin to breathe. We don’t force healing; we make space for it.

Eating disorders aren’t just symptoms they are survival strategies. Explore how IFS therapy helps unpack the inner patterns that keep us stuck, and how healing begins with understanding, not blame.

When parts of us are in pain, they often speak through extremes. In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, suicidal thoughts are not signs of disorder. They are signals from protectors trying to shield us from what feels unbearable.

Integrating suicidology and lived clinical experience, it invites clinicians to move beyond labels and listen deeply to the parts that want to die, the parts that want to live, and the Self that can hold them both.